Hacker News Reader

Comment by jknightco | Hacker News Reader

Except your granddaughter isn't providing services to society. She's providing one service to her grandmother, as a family member (which could almost be seen as repaying a debt). The other service she's providing is the equivalent of a hobby: if it was valuable enough to other people to be considered a "service to society," then she could be getting paid for it.

View on HN

> Except your granddaughter isn't providing services to society.

I think it's arguable that she does. By doing what she does she relieves the system from taking care of her grandmother, and thereby making whatever small amount of taxpayer money usable for something else meanwhile taking that economic burden on herself.

(Edit: It can of course be seen that whatever wellfare money she gets is the equivalent of her service to grandmother/society, but in that case it's still at worst a zero sum scenario.)

It's a service to society if the grandmother would otherwise be taken care of by the government (at enormous expense probably)

I can imagine other fulfilling activities like helping less fortunate people get back on their feet, which could provide a giant boost to the economy but aren't really directly profitable (as the poor have no money)

Forget society, she's doing a service to ME. Why? Because if all else failed and her grandmother were dying in the street in front of me, I would feel a moral, ethical, and emotional obligation to assume her care. I would rather pay in to BI, if that worked to remove this scenario from possible things that might happen. That's my personal felling about it, without parsing all the possible socioeconomic ramifications.

But why should your personal moral dilemma define legislation for all citizens across the country? I have an issue with "it makes ME feel bad, therefore make it law." You can use the same basic argument against gay marriage.

Regardless, the grandma won't be doing in the street without BI, just like she isn't now. I'm not arguing against providing care for the elderly. I'm just saying that if a single individual chooses to spend her life caring for another single individual, maybe that person isn't performing a service to society. Maybe she's performing a service to her grandma, and nobody else.

> Forget society, she's doing a service to ME.

And hence "society". Social costs and benefits (also known as "externalities") are simply costs and benefits to anyone outside of the decision to engage in a excahnge.

Look HN, I understand that people disagree. That's the point of this site, right? If you don't like what I said, let's talk about it. Down voting opinions you don't agree with seems childish at best.

> if it was valuable enough to other people to be considered a "service to society," then she could be getting paid for it.

Why do you assume she couldn't be getting paid for it? Maybe she's just not charging.

If she's doing something she could be getting paid for bit she's not charging, then society definitely should not have to pick up the bill. That's just unfair.

Generally it works so that you get paid to do things for rich people, but if you do those things for poor people you don't get paid.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com